(Drop Dead Studios) Spheres of Power: Official Support Thread

[Aaron]

Originally Posted by TheIronGolem

You didn't miss it, exactly. As I'm sure you know, the Green Magic Tradition gives you an Animal Companion. You've probably seen the button for adding the animal companion on the class tab at the upper left. The thing is, that's also where the button for familiars go. Basically the class tab isn't designed with the expectation that a single class would give more than one type of companion, and so your familiar button is hiding behind your animal companion button. Nothing I can do about that, I'm afraid. What you'll want to do is temporarily remove the Green Magic tradition from the character, add your familiar, then put the tradition back on your character. After that, you can switch to the familiar or animal companion through the dashboard (right side) or the Portfolio menu (top).

If I had my druthers I'd redesign all the old companions to use the new "Custom Companion" table, so we could eliminate that "only one companion" assumption. Alas, that'd move too much cheese and break a bunch of characters.

[Bansidhe]

Thanks for the info! Got it put in.

[Bob G]

Hi folks, quick (hopefully) question for IG: With regards to using the editor and working with SoP, I'm working on a class that can gain sphere casting via a custom ability. The ability grants access to a single sphere upon gaining the ability. At 10th level, the class can choose a second sphere, or choose a talent in the sphere they already have.

What Things do I need to bootstrap in order to make this ability work in Spheres of Power. Do I need to bootstrap twice, and how do I limit the number of spheres/talents the class can select?

Thanks for your help!

[TheIronGolem]

Originally Posted by Bob G

Hi folks, quick (hopefully) question for IG: With regards to using the editor and working with SoP, I'm working on a class that can gain sphere casting via a custom ability. The ability grants access to a single sphere upon gaining the ability. At 10th level, the class can choose a second sphere, or choose a talent in the sphere they already have.

What Things do I need to bootstrap in order to make this ability work in Spheres of Power. Do I need to bootstrap twice, and how do I limit the number of spheres/talents the class can select?

Thanks for your help!

First, a quick caveat: While I'm happy to provide advice and help where I can, creation of custom content with the tools I've made is not officially supported. That said, I don't mind giving a bit of guidance here.

Setting up a class with spherecasting abilities requires a few steps.

First, the class helper needs to have the tag "SphOfPow.Class", which is mainly used for calculating caster level. If you're creating a spherecasting archetype for a class that doesn't normally have spherecasting, the archetype needs to apply that tag to the class linkage early on. Here's the script I use to do so (at First/100):

perform linkage[varies].assign[SphOfPow.Class]

Next, you need the casting ability itself. The ability ID is abSoPCast, but you don't want to bootstrap that directly to a class. Instead, you'll want to create a class special called "Casting", bootstrap that class special to your class, and bootstrap abSoPCast from that special. The class special is where you'll put your rules text for that class's casting feature - usually this is boilerplate language that mostly serves to denote the class's CL progression (Low/Mid/High) and choice of casting ability modifier(s). The class special should have the tags "Helper.SpecUp" (because you generally only want the "generic" casting ability to appear on the Specials list for multiclassed casters) and "SphOfPow.Casting" (which is used by certain other scripts that look for casting abilities).

The next step is to define some parameters for how the class uses casting abilities. This is handled in a custom component that has its own tab in the editor ("Class Talent Setup" under Spheres of Power). Create one of these and select your class (or base class, if you're making an archetype) on the Class Linkage dropdown. Then use the other controls on the tab to determine what CL progression the class gets, how many talents it gets at each class level, and what abilities the class may select as its casting ability. There's also a "Delayed Casting" option, which is used for cases where the hero doesn't get casting ability at first level (like the Sphere Ranger and Sphere Paladin archetypes). Once you've finished making the class talent setup, bootstrap it to the class helper.

Side note: If you need to create a race that has innate casting ability tied to HD rather than class level, there's a similar "Race talent setup" you can use to do that.

Now, as to your particular case: If I understand correctly, your class only gains spherecasting ability if they take a particular custom special. That complicates things a bit. For that, I would try bootstrapping your class's Casting ability not from the class helper as I said above, but from the custom special (don't forget to add the ClSpecWhen.1 tag to the bootstrap, or a different number if the class has delayed casting). I would expect that to work, but if it doesn't then let me know here and we'll explore alternate paths.

As for this part:

The ability grants access to a single sphere upon gaining the ability. At 10th level, the class can choose a second sphere, or choose a talent in the sphere they already have.

I can't quite divine your intent here. Are these the only two talents the class gains over the course of its progression, or are they bonus talents the class gains at 1st and 10th level on top of a typical class talent schedule? If the character already has levels in another spherecasting class when they take their first level of your class, must they choose a whole new sphere they don't already have or can they instead take a talent from an existing sphere?

[Bob G]

Good questions IG, let me see if I can clarify. The class is not a sphere casting class under standard circumstances. Through a custom special, they can gain a very limited ability to use spheres and talents. They gain their first sphere upon selecting the custom ability, and the second at 10th level. If the hero has class levels in other sphere casting classes, these additional spheres/talents should be awarded as a bonus.

I hope that helps clarify my intent. Thank you for your help.

[TheIronGolem]

Originally Posted by Bob G

Good questions IG, let me see if I can clarify. The class is not a sphere casting class under standard circumstances. Through a custom special, they can gain a very limited ability to use spheres and talents. They gain their first sphere upon selecting the custom ability, and the second at 10th level. If the hero has class levels in other sphere casting classes, these additional spheres/talents should be awarded as a bonus.

I hope that helps clarify my intent. Thank you for your help.

Having thought about this some more: If the class is not intended to be an actual casting class but rather has a "dabbling" option, I would recommend having the custom special simply grant the Basic Magical Training feat, with either Advanced Magical Training or Extra Magic Talent being given at 10th level. Then you don't have to jump through all these hoops for an option that many players wouldn't even take anyway. It also fits better with the overall design goals of the spherecasting system, since having casting as a class feature is generally presumed to have at least a one-talent-every-other-level progression (plus the two bonus talents that the casting feature gets when first taken). Of course, I'm assuming here that the class is one of your design and that you're not implementing some other 3PP's class.

[Bob G]

Originally Posted by TheIronGolem

Having thought about this some more: If the class is not intended to be an actual casting class but rather has a "dabbling" option, I would recommend having the custom special simply grant the Basic Magical Training feat, with either Advanced Magical Training or Extra Magic Talent being given at 10th level. Then you don't have to jump through all these hoops for an option that many players wouldn't even take anyway. It also fits better with the overall design goals of the spherecasting system, since having casting as a class feature is generally presumed to have at least a one-talent-every-other-level progression (plus the two bonus talents that the casting feature gets when first taken). Of course, I'm assuming here that the class is one of your design and that you're not implementing some other 3PP's class.

Thanks! Let me give it a try and see how it works. I appreciate your help.

[Atlanticgamer]

Praying for a Christmas Miracle ever since I tried making up a few SoM characters using Pen and Paper lol.

[TheIronGolem]

Originally Posted by Atlanticgamer

Praying for a Christmas Miracle ever since I tried making up a few SoM characters using Pen and Paper lol.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to make that happen in time. I've completed all the spheres and talents, but I'm still working through classes right now. And SoM classes are really dense with features and options, which makes them time-consuming to implement in HL. And some of these archetypes are almost as much work as the classes they modify (Why yes, Iron Chef, that was a pointed comment about you).

Anyway, my current estimate for release is February.

I knew I should have taken the Time Sphere at my last level-up...

[Keante]

I'm a new HeroLab user, and I'm trying to load the SoP files in. I've gone through each one and ran the .hl file and all of that seemed to work fine. But when I start a character I don't see the SoP stuff in that list of sources that can be checked on or off. Any ideas what I might be missing?

I ran the .hl files right from inside their compressed folders; that didn't seem to hinder them opening up HeroLab and running, but maybe those .hl files need to be saved somewhere outside the compressed folder?